Clinical symptoms and laboratory abnormalities respond promptly to therapy with the antibiotics tetracycline or doxycycline, and the majority of patients become afebrile within 24 to 48 hours after the start of such treatment.

The diagnosis of ehrlichiosis rests on the detection of ehrlichia either by direct means or by the indirect means of serologic studies. Three methods are available for detection: inspection of peripheral-blood smears, PCR testing, and tissueculture.

The disease ehrlichiosis is named for the great German Nobel Prize
winning physician and bacteriologist Paul Ehrlich (1854-1915).